


the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you

by netla



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Feelings, Gen, I know I KNOW, Siblings, but here it is anyway, the cliche 'sarah dies' fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 11:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12816147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/netla/pseuds/netla
Summary: ‘Poor thing, doesn’t understand,’ Mrs Quentin says, taking a sip of her tea, eyes bright with tears again. Sky doesn’t know why she’s crying. She didn’t even like Sarah Jane, and Sarah Jane definitely wouldn’t have liked nosy old Mrs Quentin using her favourite pastel patterned cup. ‘Your mummy has gone to be an angel in heaven.’Heaven. She knows heaven from school hymns and religious education, and the phrase ‘good heavens’. Heaven is a synonym for space, but a more romantic space than the one filled with angry alien races and endless wars that exist above their heads.‘If she’s only gone to heaven, then we can get Mister Smith to look for her!’ For a moment she feels brighter than she has since the morning Mister Chandra pulled her away from Sarah Jane’s cold hands.





	the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you

Sarah Jane lays there, eyes fixed on nothing interesting that Sky can see. 

She knows what to do in these situations. She presses her ear against Sarah Jane’s chest to time her heartbeats, and the result is a perfect zero. Then she listens, not with her ears, for the small shred of electrical activity from a working heart, a working brain, and the silence hums in the air like radio static. She clasps her hands together, one over the other, like they say to do on the funny heart attack adverts, and presses down. 

If she knew how to use her powers, if she hadn’t given them up, she would be able to do something to help restart those dead muscles. But she’s useless as a weapon, and even worse as a nurse. All she knows how to do is listen to the lack of energy. 

She doesn’t phone an ambulance. There’s no point. 

She sits next to Sarah Jane, cupping her cold, stiff hand until she hears the door clang open. It’s very important to hold onto her, to keep this one remaining piece of Sarah Jane close to her, even after she’s finally run so far ahead Sky can’t catch up to her. 

There’s a gasp, hysterical words she doesn’t bother listening to, the letter box rattles as the door is slammed against the wall and footsteps pound across the drive back to number 12. All she focuses on is that nothingness, even when Mister Chandra’s hands cup her shoulders and pull her away from her mother.

\---

The funeral is small, just some neighbours and people Sarah Jane worked with. She spent all of Saturday listening to Rani and Clyde trying to track down people called stuff like ‘The Brigadier’ and ‘The Doctor’, but they were all gone somewhere, or dead themselves. 

It’s fairly overcast in the cemetery, but not too cold. They put Sarah Jane in a box in the ground, and she and Luke are supposed to throw earth over it. 

Luke was supposed to do a speech too, but he messed it up. He kept getting his sentences mixed up. She’s not talking to him now. She put a lot of nice things about Sarah Jane in that speech, and she was _trusting_ Luke, because he never gets his words mixed up. Of course he had to pick the worst possible moment to become stupid. He ended up staring at his shoelaces before a woman called Martha patted his arm and steered him away and Sky had to listen to some guy she doesn’t even know in an army uniform talk about a woman who doesn’t even sound like Sarah Jane.

\---

‘So brave. I bet Mummy is looking down on you, right now, so proud of her little girl.’

That’s nice. Sky likes the idea of Sarah Jane being proud of her for acting properly in this situation, but the woman is talking like Sarah Jane is alive and cognizant, and that goes against everything Sarah Jane taught her about what death means. She’s seen dead things: the few aliens who’ve died in front of her. She’s even been ready to kill people (robots really, but they were still people) and has never really regretted that feeling. She doesn’t have a problem with dying. Everyone says she should feel bad about things dying, but Sky suspects she’s just not made that way. What use is a weapon that can’t insulate itself from the pain of loss? 

So maybe that’s why her heart hurts in new and sharp ways every time she remembers Sarah Jane curled up and small on the sofa. It’s not that she’s suddenly become overwhelmed by the fact of death, it’s because Sarah Jane is alive, just not able to reach them. She imagines the terror like the fog from that alien box they opened up the other day, when they got lost in it and she could feel the faint electric fuzz of human bodies, but no matter how much she screamed she couldn’t make Rani notice her back. 

But everyone says Sarah Jane is plain dead, not “alternate universe” dead. She needs clarification. 

‘How can she be looking down on us when we put her in the ground? That’s physically impossible.’

Rani takes a breath from next to her on the couch, pitched high and bubbling. It sounds like laughter gone wrong, choking in her throat. Her arm squeezes painfully tight around Sky’s shoulders, but Sky doesn’t mention it.

Mrs Quentin pauses, eyes narrowed. It’s a look a lot of people get when they talk to Sky. Normally Clyde jumps in and steers the conversation to something distracting, but today he doesn’t. Just sits there on the sofa, head in his hands.

‘Poor thing, doesn’t understand,’ Mrs Quentin says, taking a sip of her tea, eyes bright with tears again. Sky doesn’t know why she’s crying. She didn’t even like Sarah Jane, and Sarah Jane definitely wouldn’t have liked nosy old Mrs Quentin using her favourite pastel patterned cup. ‘Your mummy has gone to be an angel in heaven.’

Heaven. She knows heaven from school hymns and religious education, and the phrase ‘good heavens’. Heaven is a synonym for space, but a more romantic space than the one filled with angry alien races and endless wars that exist above their heads. 

It occurs to her that maybe Mrs Quentin isn’t making sense because she knows something they don’t. Maybe she knows that there was an alien plot, or that Doctor whisked her away when Sky wasn’t looking and the thing they buried in the earth wasn’t Sarah Jane. Maybe it was all a big mistake and Mrs Quentin is trying to hint to them that Sarah Jane is fine, she just needs their help to come back down.

‘If she’s only gone to heaven, then we can get Mister Smith to look for her!’ For a moment she feels brighter than she has since the morning Mister Chandra pulled her away from Sarah Jane’s cold hands. 

Rani makes that noise again. Clyde looks at her, something etched deep into the lines of his face she can’t understand right now. ‘No, Sky. Heaven is where… where good people go when they die. Mrs Quentin just means she’s up there, banging away on a harp, you know, being happy.’

Sky can’t see Sarah Jane being happy away from the action on earth, and she didn’t even know she could play a musical instrument. It doesn’t sound very rewarding, in her opinion. Sarah Jane’d be much happier back down here with her and Luke, making tea out of foreign bread and cheeses and saying stuff like: “In this family we sit at the table for meals,” or “How can I have raised two children who can improvise holograms but still haven’t figured out how to do their own washing?”

And Sky knows in her bones there’s no alien dimension you can trap Sarah Jane Smith in that she can’t fight her way out of.

Luke must be thinking the same thing because that’s when he finally snaps, and emotion surges over his face like he’s a wire that’s built up too much internal heat and blown a fuse. ‘No she isn’t. There’s no such thing as heaven, Sky.’ He glares at his knees, when Sky thinks he really wants to glare at Mrs Quentin and Clyde. ‘It’s a misconception based on a fundamental misunderstanding of metaphysics. She’s just dead.’

There’s something about the convinced, bossy way Luke talks that makes her blood crackle and fizz. Luke always thinks he’s right, always, but what’s so wrong with the possibility that Sarah Jane is waiting for them to help her? He won’t even consider it, but why does he have to crush their hope too? Doesn’t he _want_ Sarah Jane back?

Clyde looks mad too, taking hold of Sky’s arm and hissing, ‘Luke!’ in her defense. Mrs Quentin dabs at her eyes and whispers, ‘Poor child.’ Luke balls his fists and storms out of the room. The front door slams and she can hear Luke’s footsteps pounding into a run. Clyde groans, mutters a swearword Sarah Jane _really_ wouldn’t like if she was, in fact, watching them all right now, and gets up to follow him, but Rani stops him with a hand on his knee. 

‘Leave him alone for a bit,’ she says, and her fingers tremble. Clyde shakes his head at her, at them both, but he doesn’t run after Luke, he heads to the kitchen and puts the kettle on again with frustrated, static movements. Like his brain is running two seconds behind his arms. 

Mrs Quentin sniffs, folds her tissue away into her purse. ‘Poor boy. But still, an outburst like that isn’t on. He needs to be the adult now for his little sister.’ 

She smiles at Sky, and suddenly, violently, Sky hates her more than she does Luke for being a know-it-all and Sarah Jane for leaving after she promised never to go away.

‘I’m not little.’

Rani lets out a burbling cough and reaches out to pat Mrs Quentin on the arm. ‘Why don’t you come round to mum and dad’s? We’re having a reception for the neighbours, lunch and that…’ She gives Sky’s shoulder one last squeeze, then ushers the thin old woman to her feet, mouthing ‘I’ll be right back’ when Mrs Quentin is preoccupied with her bags. 

Clyde brings her hot, sweet tea with too much milk and Sky burns her tongue, but what’s the point in waiting for it to cool down?

Clyde puts an arm around her shoulders and she curls up against him, nestles in the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He’s someone warm and familiar and solid, where Sky’s family is thin and wispy and can never, ever be pinned down. 

‘I miss her,’ she gasps, heat washing over her face, pricking her eyes. Clyde cups her head to his chest and doesn’t let go. 

\---

Rani and Clyde insisted she comes over to the reception for something to eat. Sky spends the evening on Mr Chandra’s sofa, listening to assurances that he and Mrs Chandra will help her, whatever happens, and picking at an omelette that doesn’t even have any black bits on it. 

She feels the bleeding vibrations of Mister Smith the moment she steps inside Sarah Jane’s front door. ‘Luke’s back,’ she tells Rani, and is grateful when she doesn’t ask how she knows. Sky doesn’t feel like explaining herself right now. 

‘Like dad said, we’re just over the road if you need us. For _anything_ ,’ Rani smears a hand over her mouth with a little shudder, taking a wet breath before going calm. She gives one last hug before Sky turns her away. She’s already closed the door before she remembers that she should have said “goodbye”.

The stairs are a long, dim cavern, winding torturously up to the attic.

Sky knows there is a pattern to conversations and how you should have them. It’s comforting that when the rest of the world stops making sense, the law of conversation is consistent and eternal. Even when the closest thing to a mother you will ever know has left you, there are still conversations you can only have with boys, conversations you can only have with girls, talks that only parents give you, and matters that can only be understood by other genetically engineered mutants who were supposed to kill millions of people.

‘I think I was made wrong. ’

She stands in the doorway, digging her thumbnail into the marked wooden frame. She’s vaguely aware that it’s not appropriate to make Luke have this conversation when he’s so distressed, but she doesn’t know how else to express the blank feelings clogging her heart and lungs, edged by sudden attacks of pain and emptiness. Luke sits on the sofa under the sloping roof, shoes on Sarah Jane’s favourite throw. He looks dull too, now, all the anger from earlier emptied out of him. K9 sits under the table in front of his feet, lifeless and unblinking, and Mister Smith’s processing speed is two point five seconds slower than normal. They’re all slow and empty without Sarah Jane giving them a purpose to be here.

Maybe, in the end, that’s just how people like them are supposed to be. 

Luke glances sidelong, and shifts without actually moving anywhere. It’s an invitation. ‘No you weren’t,’ he says firmly, like there’s no other option to consider, but he doesn’t follow it with ‘Why would you think that?’ like Sa- like other people do, either. For a moment she’s never been gladder to have a brother who knows everything in universe. 

‘Sarah Jane might be in heaven,’ she says, climbing next to him on the sofa. She waits until he lifts his arm around her shoulders before pressing her ear against his chest. She can hear his heart, and it’s a bloody, relentless organ. ‘Or somewhere like that. Rani thinks people go somewhere peaceful after they die.’

Luke shifts, bowing his head closer towards hers. He sounds tired and faraway, lost in places she doesn’t have the tools to reach yet. ‘That’s souls, consciousness existing beyond death… It’s not possible, Sky.’

‘So she’s just gone. Like she never existed at all.’

Luke shudders, just the slightest electromyostimulation causing his muscles to twitch, but she feels it all the same. 

‘With all respect, Sky,’ Mister Smith whirrs, a thick sound pressing down on his normal, unflappable baritone, ‘All living things have an impact on the universe, which extends even beyond Sarah Jane’s role in resolving alien conflict. On a purely quantum level, every photon that has deflected from Sarah Jane’s physical features to enter your eye has resulted in an electromagnetically charged neuron signal that has irreversibly altered your biochemical makeup.’

‘She changed all of us,’ Sky murmurs in translation, although no one left in the room needs her to do so. She recognises computerised consolation when it’s given to her. ‘So her energy will stay with us forever?’

‘Not forever,’ Luke reminds her, winding his fingers in her hair. His voice is breathy with emotion, but detached and practical, like he was when John Harrison imprisoned them and Luke explained slavery to her, except magnified about a hundred times. ‘But everything in the universe is made of the same basic elements. So mum’s… after you die, your chemicals enter the earth and that nurtures the vegetation, so new things can have a better chance at life. Growth… growth depends on death. And one day the world will break down into compound particles and everything that was us, sustaining that lifecycle on earth will disintegrate and reform to create new planets, with new people to live on them.’ He lets out a shuddery breath, finishing in a rush and he squeezes her in a hug. His face is hot, pressed against the top of her head, and he’s crying now, trying to halt the flow of tears unsuccessfully behind soft hitching whimpers. ‘ _That’s_ what mum is going to do, Sky. It’s what she’s always done.’

She presses one hand against his hip and lets him hug her, wishing her body would give in and cry too, so he wouldn’t feel alone. She doesn’t think there’s a “right thing to say” that could make him stop. 

So when he’s calmed into wet, heavy breaths, she says instead, ‘I think Sarah Jane would like that better than heaven.’ 

‘Yeah,’ he replies with an incongruous laugh, wiping his eyes on the hem of his red scarf. He kisses her head again. ‘I do too.’


End file.
